“You bring that gun up here to shoot me? Just curious.”
“No. It's not loaded. I wanted to scare you.” I glanced toward the window. I could not place why I believed Philip and not Mutt. Perhaps because Mutt had avoided my eyes, and Philip had been frank with his looks. Minor but telling.
“You scared me. For a minute.” He coughed again. “I am truly sorry about Candace and your baby.”
I grabbed his arm. “Then help me nail the son-of-a-bitch.”
He cocked an eyebrow and looked half-amused. “How? What should we do?”
“Force him to open the safe. See if he's still got those ID papers there.”
“That gun of yours didn't just become magically loaded, did it? Just how are we supposed to force him to do anything-”
And that's when the lights went out, popping like the last beat of a heart.
Philip and I stumbled out onto the second-floor hallway. It was pitch-dark. He had no candles or flashlights in his room, and I groped my way along the wall.
“Find Mutt,” Philip hissed. “I want to know where the hell he is.”
Brief illumination came with a scattershot of lightning arcing across the sky. “You find him. I gotta check on Can-dace.” Still carrying my unloaded gun, I sidled to the stairs and ran up to the top floor.
Candace's room was locked. I knocked hard and identified myself when Gretchen called for my name. The door opened a fraction.
One candle had been lit, shining weakly on the crowd gathered within. Candace-and now Aubrey, too-lay in bed, both still. Aubrey was mumbling to himself. Candace seemed flushed. Sass leaned over them both. Deborah, Sass, Pop, and Gretchen sat around the bed. Sweetie blinked at me, nestled against Gretchen's foot.
I closed the door behind me. They all stared at me.
“You've been in a fight,” Deborah noted.
“Are they okay? What's wrong-” I began to babble, but Sass cut me off with a wave of her hand.
“They're holding on. But it was too much for Deborah to run from room to room, so Bob Don carried Aubrey in here.” Her voice lowered a notch toward tenderness. “It was best not to move Candace.” I noticed then-Sass's right hand was linked with Aubrey's, her left with Candace's.
“Has she asked for me?” I leaned down and kissed Candace's forehead. She didn't stir in response.
“No,” Deborah answered. She mopped gently at Candace's brow. “They're slipping into coma, Jordan. We've got to get them to a hospital. I say we try the boats, even in the storm.” Sass moaned, averting her face from the rest of us.
“The power's out,” I announced, stating the obvious.
“What's going on downstairs?” Pop demanded. “I go down, you and Mutt are glaring at each other, he won't talk to me, he starts yelling for Wendy-”
“Stay here. All of you. Lock the door behind me. And don't open for anyone but me.”
“This is insane,” Sass blurted. “Acting frightened in our own house-”
“Aunt Sass, please.” I begged. “Just stay here. Aubrey needs you. So does Candace.”
She blinked at me, then at her brother. She fell silent and leaned her cheek against the quilts covering Aubrey's stomach.
“I'm coming with you,” Pop announced. He clambered to his feet.
“No, Pop, stay here. Protect the-”
“I can assure you,” Deborah announced icily, “that I can protect myself, and so can Gretchen and Sass.”
“Fine! Then y'all protect Pop! I don't want him in any trouble tonight!” My requests then apparently heeded, I kissed Candace's forehead again and dashed for the door.
“Take the candle!” Gretchen called.
“No,” I answered. “Deb needs it.” I shut the door on Gretchen's reply. A moment later I heard the bolt slide home.
They'd be safe in that room. I hoped.
I felt my way along the wall, stumbling. I could hear voices raised in hue and cry two floors below, shouts of two men and one woman's strident tone. Mutt, Wendy, and Philip, probably having it out.
I made a quick stop by my room, where I fetched a matchbook and the candle I'd used to explore the attic. (I didn't want to think about what I'd seen there while the entire house was bathed in darkness.)
I was tentatively feeling my way down the stairs when the shots rang out.
24
I crouched in the stairway, listening. Above the lashing cry of the storm the only regular sound was the intense drum of my heartbeat.
Another gunshot erupted. I hugged against the wall.
You see, I've been shot before. I know the lancing agony of a bullet ripping through skin and muscle, the heat of it kissing your bone, the blind pain that defies imagination. Terror welled up in me like black blood from a deep wound. My breath rattled in my chest.
A voice from above whispered harshly, “Son?”
Pop. I grimaced. “Pop! Go back upstairs. Stay with the others!”
“No, I won't. I ain't gonna let you go down there-”
“Listen.” I nimbly ascended a few steps to where I could see his outline, crouching in the heavy blackness of the hallway. “One of us has to go. I'll go. I think the shooting's over. No one's screaming, so maybe no one's hurt.” I believe this technique is called clutching at straws. But I didn't share that thought with Pop. I shoved the gun toward his hands in the darkness. “Is there a cartridge for this up here?”
“I don't know. I don't think so. Mutt always kept all the guns in his study.” Pop's voice was strained, pleading. “Jordan, just stay up here. With us.”
“Listen. I'll be back in a minute. Please. Go back.”
“Stubborn, just like your mama.”
I didn't argue this time. He turned and headed back toward Candace's room. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Silence fell. I imagined Philip lying wounded, or dead, on the study floor, a thin tendril of smoke rising from the hole in his skin. And I'd let him go down there alone.
Whoever was down there shooting, he or she had been the one to hurt Candace. To kill my child. I blew out the candle and closed my eyes for a brief prayer.
Then I rushed down the stairs, my hands aching for a throat. The study doors stood half-closed, and I heard only silence within.
Slowly I pushed back the door, keeping my head low. The other study doors stood open onto the porch, wind and rain rattling in, soaking the floor. The air felt oppressive with the weight of the storm. The room was a shambles, as though a fight had torn it apart. I crept in, keeping my back against the door, breathing softly through my mouth, listening for any telltale sign that I wasn't alone.
Lightning cascaded its eerie flash into the bay, and the room lit dimly. And I could see the body lying on the floor, folded over the end of the rug.
I scurried forward, my fingers trembling as I fired the match and lit the candle. Light spilled out in an eldritch glow, and I stared down into the vacant, dead eyes of Rufus Beaulac.
The bullet had smashed through his throat, and his hand lay limply near the terrible wound, as though he needed simply to cough and all would be well. Blood-maroon in this uncertain light-speckled his face, his chest, his twisted lips, the floor. I held my fingers above his mouth. No breath stirred against my skin.
“Oh, my lord,” a voice not my own murmured, and I nearly screamed. I jerked the light up-Uncle Jake sat huddled in his chair, his face as frightened as a child's. His hands were clasped in the fold of his robe and he shivered in the dampness gusting in from the door. He blinked at me as if he didn't quite know me. “Jordan. Oh, dear. Something's wrong with Rufus. You better fetch Deb, he's-”
“He's dead, Uncle Jake. Are you okay?” I felt a sudden, sharp fear that with his heart condition, tonight would bring on an attack. “Where are the others?”
Puzzlement clouded his usually acerbic face. “I'm fine.
They-they're outside. Mutt and Philip argued about opening the safe, and taking the boat-” He pointed toward the wall safe, exposed now because the reproduction battle flag covering it lay on the floor. The safe door was open like a dark eye.