“No blood,” he said aloud.
He came erect, still holding the lantern up high, staring out into the darkness of swamp and swirling muddy water.
“Dain!” he shouted. He lowered his voice slightly. “You don’t have a boat or a gun or a knife. No food, no drinkable water. All you’ve got is a choice. Me or the swamp.”
Across the narrow arm of waterway, below the far bank of the bayou, Dain stood submerged in thick swamp water up to his neck. His intent face was touched by the light, but he had smeared mud across it so it reflected nothing.
He was motionless, unblinking, watching the enemy whose voice was coming across the water.
“Your wife was part of the contract, Dain, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your kid. You called that one about right. I’ve been a straight cop since then.”
Dain stood in the thick brown water in stunned silence, not believing what he had heard. Was it this easy? Or this hard? Did the enemy at last have a face, a name?
He’d sought this confrontation, prayed for it, had trained for five years for this moment. He’d thought he’d created a killer to face this professional killer — and here he stood neck-deep in the muck and the other guy had the gun.
So who was he now? A computer nerd, a chess groupie, a games freak who’d gotten his wife and child killed. Trying to undo that unspeakable evil, he’d gone right on to a new game even worse. A game that was relentlessly killing, one by one, every poor bastard who crossed his path. Except Inverness, who, lantern high overhead to create a white core in the darkness, would have made a beautiful target for a man with a gun. Dain, of course, was empty-handed. He could have howled like a wolf with the agony and the irony of it.
Inverness was declaiming to the swamp as if it wore Dain’s face. Fucking Demosthenes yelling at the ocean. He sickened Dain, revived his hatred. If he could hold on to that...
“When I was told you were on your way to New Orleans, I thought you were after me...”
Who told you, bastard? Who who who?
“It was my idea, not Maxton’s, to try and scare you off. When that didn’t work, I thought you’d made me — so I wanted to get you out here in the swamp where killing you wouldn’t make any more stir than swatting a skeeter. I figured showing you Zimmer would make you come running out here to save the girl.”
What about poor Minus, you fucker?
As if he heard the thought, Inverness said, “I needed Minus to guide us so you wouldn’t get suspicious. I figured he’d go after you, but he startled me and so I took him first. Just as good. We gotta talk, don’t we? Just you and me.”
Dain almost answered. He wanted to — wanted to explain himself, wanted to know why this killer was diabolically yoked to him, wanted answers to the questions tormenting him more than he wanted revenge. He started to clear his throat to yell across the narrow channel, then grabbed hold of his mind, let the other man’s spate of words stay him.
“It’s just you and me and the swamp, Dain. The girl, Maxton — they don’t matter. It’s you and me who share the nightmares. You and me who gotta talk. Or maybe we gotta fight.” He gave a short laugh. “Maybe I’ll fuck up again...”
He paused, holding the lantern aloft to make a white-hot halo around him, peering earnestly into the darkness where Dain, shivering in the thick water, almost answered that almost seductive voice. It was that short laugh that stopped him.
That and the loathing that had swept through him at mention of the nightmares. His nightmares. They were all he had, and the killer even wanted to take those away from him.
“What do you say, Dain? I can’t bring back your wife and child, but... can’t we let the past die, go on from here?”
Was Inverness asking forgiveness? Maybe, after all...
What the hell was he thinking of? This was a hitman asking forgiveness, asking Dain to speak, to show himself, standing there with a lantern in one hand — and a gun in the other. A gun he had methodically reloaded after killing Minus.
Forever the amateur, Dain, his thinking screwed up by what he’d learned tonight. An amateur with a patchwork body that ached to give in to the swamp, and maybe fever, a body that wanted to just slip under the water and...
Inverness would be counting on that. But goddammit, Inverness wasn’t the only killer in this swamp. All day Dain had watched things die, none of them willingly. Hatred and weakness rose like bile in his throat — and he was silent.
Right now, silence was the only weapon he had.
It worked. Inverness had talked too much, and realized it.
“You’ll be dead by nightfall tomorrow, Dain!” he yelled, as if suddenly enraged that he wasn’t able to end it right now. “If the fucking swamp doesn’t get you, I will!”
He turned away from the bayou, just a pale aureole moving away into the night, dropping Dain back into total darkness. The mud on his face had dried. He could feel it cracking as the tenseness left his features. He patted water on it noiselessly with his hands. He waited.
With Inverness gone, the swamp that was waiting with him gradually came alive again. The dark air again was filling with its humming, croaking, cackling song. Dain almost sang along with it. Inverness was afraid of him! He’d tried to kill Dain twice and had failed both times. He was the professional and Dain was the amateur, but the slaughter was working on him in a way it wasn’t working on Dain.
That gave Dain an edge. He felt he could stand there in the heavy water of the swamp all night if he had to. Which is when he sagged and his head went under. His groping hand caught a branch trailing down into the water from the bank, he pulled himself erect, spluttering, fighting his gag reflex, a tremendous urge to cough and snort. Inverness was still not that far away.
On his way back to the tent, Inverness passed the twenty-pound catfish whose thrashing had startled him earlier. It was still flapping its tail and gasping in the grass. He picked it up and carried it back to the water, threw it in. Almost, he thought with sudden self-anger, as if placating some god of the predators — the only deity he would have acknowledged if any gods had existed at all.
Was Dain after all tough enough to have known Inverness was trying to lure him, and so had kept silent out there in the swamp? How in the fuck had he missed with all six shots? Come to that, how the fuck had he missed killing Dain five years ago after putting three charges of double-0 buckshot into him and burning a cabin down around him?
Or had Dain been hit after all tonight, but hadn’t started bleeding until he was in the water?
Back at camp, moving slowly and thoughtfully, Inverness killed the lantern and went into the tent to wait out the dying of the fire’s dim light.
It was very late and through drifting tatters of mist a gibbous moon showed the tent flaps were closed. The fire was dead except for one or two dully glowing embers. An owl swooped across the clearing on huge silent wings. A fish broke water. A raccoon came hesitantly out of the brush to begin nosing around the front of the tent.
On the side of the flatboat where the pirogue was lashed, the very top of Dain’s head broke water very slowly. He stood, mouth-breathing, water streaming off his flattened hair and down his face, for a full two minutes, waiting, listening. Four baby raccoons trundled out to join their parent in foraging around in front of the tent. All else was silence and darkness. Safety.
He turned to work on the ties holding down the pirogue, unfastening them one by one. Out in the bayou behind him a fish jumped. He had it all planned out. Steal the pirogue, head for Vangie’s fishing camp as quickly as possible. Maybe she would have guns there. If not, get her away immediately, out into the swamp where Maxton and his men couldn’t find her.