Page 185 of Slack Tide Kill

The river, the sea, the marsh. Everything he'd worshipped. Everything he'd tried so hard to become, and everything he deserved. Clean. Simple. Poetic.

It would be fair. It would be just.

Then she remembered the wild look in Liam's eyes, the terror. Standing over Gerald Spate, on the edge of doing something he'd regret. Never again, she'd said. Surely that had to go for her, too?

It would be so easy to ignore, though. It would feel right. Like justice served, and nobody need ever know it wasn't just an accident.

But she would know. Was she really just an animal?

One moment longer passed, then she pulled Mercer from the waves. He tried to wrench his ruined hand away, but he was weak. She held both arms, twisted them behind his back and locked on the second cuff.

"You do not have to say anything," she continued, gasping. "But anything you do say may … be given in evidence," she finished. "Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?"

"Put me back!" Mercer cried. "Let the river take me!"

"I'll take that as a yes. Now come on."

She dragged him to his feet and started back toward the shore.

Mercer threw his head back and howled. Long, unintelligible, raving. Maybe a curse. Maybe a poem. Maybe nothing at all.

Sally did not care.

Each step took them closer to land. Away from the sea. Out of chaos and toward order.

The storm kept driving overhead. It moved across the beach and the marsh alike in black sheets, beating the shingle flat. It filled every lull in the tide, turning Dungeness to an endless river. Somewhere out there Liam was alive. She hoped Mayhew was alive too. Somewhere her people would be drawing near.

But for now Sally pressed through the wild landscape alone, driving the Cockle-Eye Killer before her.

76 CAUGHT IN THE STORM

By the time Sally reached the road, blue lights were flashing through the haze of rain. A squad van. Sirens wailed and she raised one hand to greet them.

The van stopped and officers ran out. She recognized Stephen Gemmell. His mouth opened in shock, eyes running over Sally's bandaged head, Mercer in cuffs, blood slicking down them both.

"What happened?"

"Got caught in the storm," Sally managed, then pointed. "Liam and Mayhew are that way. Mayhew's trapped in Mercer's van and the tide's rising."

Gemmell ordered Hawlin and Flaherty ahead and they broke into a run, soon swallowed by the driving rain.

"Come on, Sally," came Gemmell's voice. His hand on her elbow, easing the cuffs from her grasp. "This way."

"You'll never make anything stick," Mercer snarled. "I'm a victim of police abuse, and–"

"Shut up," said Gemmell, leading them both on.

Sally felt lightheaded, as if at any moment she might be carried away by the storm, lifted into the winds to be batted across the sky. Part of the flow, part of the river.

That didn't seem so bad right now.

Gemmell opened the van's rear door and pushed Mercer in. Then there was blessed silence. No more of his desperate need to be seen. No more of his lost-soul cruelty.

The storm felt clean with him gone from it. Honest.

"You've done an amazing thing here, Sally," Gemmell said. He stood before her and looked into her eyes, though it was hard for her to focus. Her gaze kept getting pulled to the side. To the reactors, where Jason Harrow had died.

Why had he had to die?