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No, fuck it. No. Help me, Nicole. Help me. I will make sure she stays safe. Just help me.
Neil moved to his side. Though the weather and goggles made it impossible to see his face, Tiger figured his thoughts weren’t far from Tiger’s own. The grim set of his mouth said so. He was looking, though, head turning in a slow back and forth,scanning to see if the conclusion they were being forced to face was as hopeless as it seemed.
Tiger’s hand shot up, grabbed Neil’s shoulder. In an instant, Neil’s gun was up, and Lawrence had likewise gone to combat-ready. He was standing a few yards away on Tiger’s right, on a stretch of ground Neil had confirmed was stable.
Tiger shook his head, his best way of telling them it wasn’t a threat he’d detected. He bent his head to the wind, continuing to grip Neil’s shoulder. “I think…I thought…” He waited, willing his heart to stop thumping so fast, holding his breath. There, just a faint…something.
“I can hear her.”
“What?”
Tiger held up his other hand for silence. He stood, drops continuing to run down the sides of the poncho’s visor, over the goggles and his lips. He willed all competing noises to shut the hell up.Don’t strain to hear things.The hearing doc, reminding him.You’ll just frustrate yourself. Let the sounds come, log them down for our next appointment…
There, on the wind…it blew in waves, up, down…there. A thin cry. A wavering note. He took a step in that direction. Then another, and another.
His mind could play tricks on him, and would do so. But the doc had also said he might be able to hear what other people couldn’t.Please, please…
Neil and Lawrence fell in, following his lead, but adjusted left and right to increase the range of their view as he kept moving forward. Neil grabbed his arm, stopping him from walking straight into a section of marsh that would have plunged him up to his waist in the water. The goggles caught the gleam of a surfacing gator’s eyes as they adjusted to walk parallel to the water.
A few minutes later, Neil brought him to a halt again and gestured. They’d been skirting the cypress swamp, staying close to the edge because what Tiger was hearing was coming from somewhere across it. Now Tiger saw why.
About fifty yards away, in the middle of the water, was a sand bar built up with debris and thick grasses.
Tiger squinted to bring an unexpected assortment of straight edges into focus. A fucking shack, the size of an outhouse, probably somebody’s hunting shelter. Infrequently used, because even in this visibility it looked like nothing more than a ramshackle assortment of rotting boards. But it had walls and a roof.
Lawrence and Neil pressed against his sides to stop him from jumping into the water and trying to swim across. Neil motioned to them to stay where they were and moved off into the rain-soaked darkness.
Lawrence spoke loudly in Tiger’s ear. “If the hunters using it come in on foot from the park, they might keep a craft covered up somewhere to get to it. He’s checking.”
He’d kept a grip on Tiger’s arm, so Lawrence must have felt what was going through him. “You okay, man?”
No. Fuck snakes, gators, or anything else in that water, Tiger needed to plunge in and start swimming. That thin cry had expanded. It wasn’t a bird, or the whistle of the wind, playing tricks with him as he’d feared. He could hearher. Hear Aubrey.
She was crying. Calling for him, in between choking sobs.Uncle… Tiger. Mommy… Grandma…help. Please help. I’m so scared…
Thunder clapped above and he flinched as the last syllable became a piercing shriek. She didn’t like thunder. He’d told her he’d take her on his motorcycle one day, show her with a roaring engine that thunder was nothing at all to be scared of. Just the opposite.
“Hang on,” Lawrence said, and Tiger realized he was straining against his hold. “He’s coming back.”
Neil was returning along the water’s edge, holding a rope to a small raft that looked like it belonged to fucking Huckleberry Finn. Something a hunter wouldn’t worry about leaving tied up to the cypress knees and concealed under a layer of debris. The platform was big enough for two men to precariously pole themselves across. For deeper waters, an oar was lashed next to the pole.
As he and Lawrence joined Neil down on the bank, Neil called out over the wind, holding up a hand to clarify his intent, in case Tiger couldn’t make out all the words. “Let me get on first. Do it exactly like I do it.”
“Unless his ass falls in, and then don’t do it that way,” Lawrence shouted in Tiger’s other ear.
Neil shot him an eat-shit look, but handed him the rope before stepping onto the raft, testing its stability. He went to one knee to free the pole from the rope securing it.
“Almost everything in the world worth do ing can be accomplished from a kneeling position. My Mistress tells me that all the time.”
Startled, Tiger looked toward Lawrence. Despite the roar of the storm, and everything else going on, Lawrence had spoken as if they were at the club, sharing a drink after a long, hard session. When the mind, while exhausted, was the clearest on the things that mattered.
He hadn’t removed his night vision goggles, but Tiger felt like he could see the green eyes meeting his. Whatever was ahead, Lawrence had just jogged him out of the tunnel vision groove, opening up his senses to better prepare him for what lay ahead.
Tiger gave him a nod, and held onto the most important thing. She might be scared, she might need him, but Aubrey wasalive.
At Neil’s gesture, Tiger got on the raft and accepted control of the pole. Neil showed him how to use it to guide the raft forward, then pointed to the oar, a cue to use it when the pole could no longer reach bottom.
When Tiger gave him a thumbs up, Neil took up watch, his gun drawn as they started toward the island. The shack wasn’t big, but at least two other people could fit in there with Aubrey. Lawrence staying watchful on the bank took care of the possibility that they could have left backup hidden in the woods.
