“Wait,” she said, and he turned to look down at her. One of the two doors had fallen off its hinges and left a narrow opening.
“Don’t go in,” she said.
“Why not? The whole place is tilting already — let’s see if it’s safe.”
“I’ll be careful,” she said. What she didn’t say was that she didn’t want his presence to disturb the vibe inside, whatever it might be — and she knew that if she so much as hinted at that, he’d think she’d completely lost her mind. She was surprised herself at how much she already valued his good opinion of her; it wasn’t something she’d experienced in a long time. The dating pool in Port Orlov was meager, to put it kindly.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, grabbing up her bedroll and backpack and sidling past him.
He looked unpersuaded.
“Here,” she said, taking the bilikin from around her neck and dropping it down over his head. “Now you can keep an eye on things even in the dark of night.”
“You’re going to need it more than I do,” he said, glancing toward the church doors.
“It’s the leader of the hunt who’s supposed to wear it.”
For that split second it took her to put the necklace on him, their faces had been very close, and she had felt his warm breath on her cheek. She had seen the stubble on his chin, and a faint scar along his jawline. Where, she wondered, had he come by that? And why did she have such an urge to run her finger gently along its length?
“See you in the morning,” she said, to break the mood. “Put me down for French toast.”
But he still appeared dubious as she slipped between the doors, then flattened herself for a moment against the back of one, with her eyes closed. It was only when she heard his footsteps descend the stairs outside that she opened them again, to a scene of such desolation that she was sorely temped to change her plans.
Chapter 26
By the time Harley and Eddie had found their way back to the cave again, stumbling through the forest with their flashlights and their tools, night had fallen, and the wind had been blowing in their faces the whole time. Even with the black wool balaclava pulled all the way down over his head, Harley’s face stung like it been slapped a thousand times.
Eddie, similarly attired, had done nothing but bitch all the way back.
Especially because their haul had been so disappointing.
The moment they staggered into the cave — about the tenth one they’d tried — Russell had been up on his feet and shouting, “What the fuck? You left me here?”
Harley, trying to get the tarp back in place, had told him to shut up, but Russell was just getting going.
“Where the fuck have you been? I wake up, and I’m ready to go, and you two assholes are nowhere around! Where did you go? Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because you got so damn drunk last night,” Harley said, gesturing at a few of the beer cans glittering in the glow of the Coleman lamp, “we didn’t have time for you to sober up.”
“You didn’t have time, or you didn’t want to share whatever you got? You went digging, right?” His eyes went to the shovel and pickaxe they had dropped by the mouth of the cave. “What’d you find? You holding out on me already?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, slumping in a weary heap against the wall. “We’re holding out on you.”
Harley tossed his backpack down, reached inside it and threw a string of crystal rosary beads on the ground. “That’s what we found.”
Russell picked it up, looked at the beads — apparently even he could tell they were pretty worthless — and tossed them away. “What else?”
“What else what?” Eddie said. “It took us hours just to dig up that piece of shit.”
“I don’t believe you,” Russell said, grabbing Harley’s backpack and shaking it out. A cascade of PowerBars, Tic Tacs, Chapstick, Trojans, and the like spilled out.
Harley felt his temper start to rise — this day had been bad enough already — and he was about to demand that Russell put it all back in the bag when he stopped himself. He could tell that Russell was on the verge of losing it altogether, and maybe a little drunk even now. He also knew what was really wigging him out — and it wasn’t the idea that he’d been cheated. It was having to spend the day alone, cooped up in this cave, wondering what was going on and whether or not he and Eddie were even planning to come back at all. Russell would never admit it — Harley knew that damn well — but he was having a panic attack.
After two years at Spring Creek — and several stays in solitary confinement there — Russell had lost his talent for solitude, or confinement.
“So what’s the plan then?” Russell said, looming over him but still having to stoop beneath the low roof of the cave. “Do we leave?”
“On what?” Eddie said. “Last I checked, the Kodiak’s on the rocks.”
“The skiff then.”
“In these seas?” Eddie sneered.
“Well what then? Are we gonna dig again tomorrow?”
That was the million-dollar question that Harley had been puzzling over all the way back. As he and Eddie had skirted the colony on their return, he had seen the propeller blades of the Sikorsky rising behind the stockade wall, and he had glimpsed the stark white light of electric bulbs. That guy Slater and his Coast Guard crew were settling in … but for what? If they moved into the graveyard, all he’d be able to do was wait them out.
Or, and this had occurred to him halfway back, he could wait to see if they unearthed anything of value, then steal it from them once they had. It wasn’t as if the Coast Guard thought there was anyone else on the island. Maybe, as a result, they wouldn’t take the normal security precautions. You never could tell.
“What are we eating?” Eddie said, rummaging around in the supplies. “Let’s make something good and hot.”
“Sure,” Harley said, “and while we’re at it, why don’t we hang out a sign that says we’re here? Why don’t we make a big fire, and some smoke, and maybe even attract some animals to the smell?”
Eddie, stymied, rubbed his mittened hands together and waited.
Harley crawled over to the box of canned rations, and tossed them each a couple. The ones he grabbed for himself said BEEF STROGANOFF.
Grumbling, the other two settled into their corners and dug in.
Harley was hungry, too, and after everything he’d been through, even the shit in the can tasted great. That must be how the Army got away with it. Drop a guy into some desert foxhole, and he’ll eat anything, and be grateful for it.
The rosary was lying over by the wall, and Harley couldn’t help but relive the disappointment he’d felt when they’d finally busted into the coffin. Eddie had been afraid to reach in, so it had fallen to Harley again to take the damn thing out. He’d tried not to look at the face of the corpse this time; the last thing he needed was to be haunted by yet another figment of his imagination, like that guy in the sealskin coat. He’d felt around on the upper body and the face and the neck, checking the fingers too for rings, but this was the only thing he could locate or pry loose. Even the string of beads hadn’t come easy; it was as if the corpse was fighting to hang on to it.
When they were done, Harley had shoved the shards of the coffin back into the grave, then covered up the hole with dirt and snow again. He hoped it would snow some more during the night to further conceal his tracks.
Russell belched and popped the top on another beer. Harley was starting to think that the three cases might not last long enough, after all.
Of course it was an open question how long Russell himself would last. The guy was like a ticking bomb ever since he’d come back from the penitentiary, and Harley just wanted to make sure that he was well out of range of the explosion when it happened.