Page 46 of Ace
Keller promptly snapped the set over his head, adjusting the muffs to protect his hearing. Airplane propellers were one helluva big fan, but they also made an extreme noise. Quickly, she strapped smaller headsets on the dogs, and wasn’t that a sight? Two dogs with silly smiles as if they knew they were her favorites. Make that three. Keller felt a smile coming on, too.
At last she called to the other dogs on shore, “Stay. I won’t be long. Y’all know what to do while I’m gone.”
Keller tapped his headset when her voice came through loud and clear. Which meant she understood Bluetooth audio technology and there had to be a cell tower nearby. She wasn’t uneducated at all, and Sanctuary wasn’t as remote as Keller had initially thought. What else didn’t he know about Savannah Church?
Proficiently, she backed the airboat away from shore before she turned it around and gradually accelerated. Sir Galahad grinned, long strings of drool streaming into the wind. No wonder they sat forward.All that drool hit the plastic back of his chair, thank heavens.
Meanwhile Red’s long ears trailed behind him. For a badly used bait dog, he seemed happy and carefree instead of jumpy and traumatized. Big and gangly, he’d shocked Keller when he’d first brushed against his hand back on Savannah’s porch. As usual it had only taken one touch and Keller had felt precisely what Red endured in the dog fighting pit. It’d taken all he had to not break down in front of Savannah and cry like an idiot for the torture Red survived. There were times Keller was ashamed of humankind. They could be such monsters.
Glancing out the corner of his eye, he sneaked a look at the competent and beautiful woman at his side. He knew now that Savannah would’ve understood if he’d broken down. She’d have cried with him. He just wasn’t ready to fall apart again.
Night had fallen and the water way glimmered from the last of the fading sunlight. The boat’s soft blue interior LED running lights turned on under the deck, while yellow driving lights along the deck did the same. Keller took a deep breath of the only part of Louisiana that he considered home. The bayou. Here, he finally felt at peace. How could he not? Beauty was everywhere.
Tattered curtains of silvery Spanish moss hung from dark fingered branches high overhead. Humidity hung in foggy patches like a stifling damp blanket over the swamp, filling Keller’s nose with the distinct smells of fish, mold, and mud. It’d been a long time since he’dbeen in the bayou, but it seemed like yesterday. Part of him was still here.
The soundtrack hadn’t changed a bit. At his left, the too close swoosh of a gator sliding into the water turned his head. Several pairs of bright, beady eyes glittered starboard. A lazy fin or perhaps a spiny tail stirred the water between those eyes and the boat. Could be an alligator checking them out. Not that Keller was worried. He’d learned years ago that alligators were near-sighted and easily distracted. They were ambush hunters. They survived by sneaking up on unwitting prey, generally along the edge of the swamp.
The rules were simple. If you were close enough to hear an alligator hiss, you were too damned close. But if you were unfortunate enough to encounter one on land, your best bet was to run like the wind in the opposite direction. Rarely did an alligator run its prey down, mostly because its top running speed was shit. The rules changed in the water, though. There they could burst into speeds of twenty plus knots per hour. You were in their domain. All they needed was a good hold on a leg, arm or foot, and the infamous death roll began. Gator one, idiot human zip. Crunch. Crunch. Gurgle. Gurgle. You died. The end.
Even as Keller lifted his fingers out of the water, his soul seemed to unwind and relax. Here there was peace. Even as dark as it was becoming, there were still waterfowl everywhere, bobbing for minnows attracted to the surface or fishing for crawdads. The chorus of the bayou swelled around him. Tree frogs croaked. Bullfrogs bellowed. Owls hooted and the spring’s firstfox kits yipped in the dark. So much life layered upon life. It was an opera like no other. Though he couldn’t see or hear them, Keller knew there were possums, muskrats, raccoons, and snapping turtles along the muddy, marshy shoreline. During the day he might spot a great white egret or a heron. Other shore birds. Thick vegetation lined most of the shoreline. Rats and mice lived in the sawgrass. Snakes. Lizards. Which made him think of the long-snouted crocodile, the gharial that had seemed intent on attacking them. Add that to the mystery of Savannah’s rosy red bird from Australia, and Keller came up with an inevitable conclusion. Someone was smuggling rare birds and animals into the bayou. They’d lost track of a shipment.
Instinctively, he reached for Savannah’s hand on the stick. She knew this part of the bayou and it showed. The boat had yet to scrape sand or hit any submerged stumps. Pursing his lips, Keller sent her an air kiss. A smile curled her pretty lips and she sent one back to him. She wasn’t angry. Just busy. She deserved more, but that would do for now.
They made good time. By the time Savannah cut the motor and pulled her craft into shallow water, Keller had no idea where they were. He hadn’t thought to ask. The glide through the swamp had been restful and distracting. Even now fireflies twinkled from the reeds along the murky shoreline. There was a time when the bayou had been home. He’d missed that.
“We’re back at Gran Mere’s,” Savannah announced through his headset. “At least, we’re close. My car’s parked a mile or two from here.”
Here being a secluded sandbar beneath the crowded boughs of a shadowy enclave of bald cypress. The most prolific plant in the bayou, these hardy giants with their unique, submerged buttressed trunks thrived in brackish water all their lives. They stood firm and unmoving. Many of these enclaves shared the same root system for miles of shoreline. Like the grasses of the Everglades, all they needed was water and sunshine, and they could take over the world.
Savannah had chosen well. This tree’s mighty branches disappeared into the night sky. Its base measured at least six feet wide, and its needle-like leaves were thick and fragrant overhead. Once he doffed his headset and jumped on shore, Keller put one palm to the tree’s trunk. Instant calm filled him. Instant peace. The last of his apprehension melted in the sublime contact with a lifeform older than the United States of America. Another benefit of his unique gift of empathy was that trees communicated with him. Not like they spoke English like the Ents of Middle Earth in Tolkien’s“Lord of the Rings.”But all trees definitely passed a sense of calm and peace to anyone who stopped long enough to listen. It was as if they knew puny mankind needed assurance that life would always find a way.
Patting the tree’s stalwart trunk, telling it goodbye in his way, Keller turned to find Savannah staring at him, her eyes wide as if she knew precisely what he was doing.
“You communicate with trees but you can’t hear human thoughts?”
“No big deal.” He shrugged. “I like trees.”
Which made her smile. “And I like you.”
What else could he say? “I like you too, Savannah.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
They made quick time to where Savannah had parked her car, but she walked past it in the dark, needing to get to Gran Mere’s humble home before her flashlight flickered one more time. It had been one heck of a long, hard day, and she was tired. She had extra clothes at Gran Mere’s, and she could sleep. Keller could rest there, too. But something was wrong. There was discord in the threads of the universe tonight. Savannah could sense it.
Keller must’ve picked up on her unease. “You feel it, too,” he said as he fell in step at her side.
“I sense something,” she admitted. But not until Red let out a battle cry did Savannah break into a run. Ever faithful Keller jogged beside as she batted branches and shoved low hanging vines out of her way, hoping her toes or flip-flops didn’t snag a vine or root as she ran. Sir Galahad plowed through the brush at herside. The way loomed extra dark ahead, and she could feel it. Whatever it was. Something big and black and—empty. A void.
Savannah nearly tripped over Galahad’s stalwart body in the dark. He’d stopped in her path. Only then did she understand what she wasn’t seeing. Gran Mere’s houseboat was gone.
“What the hell?” Keller hissed, his feet spread wide and his hands on his hips. “I didn’t think that boat was mobile.”
“It isn’t,” she replied as her flashlight spotlighted the empty space. “It was on concrete blocks, not wheels or a trailer. That’s why the skirting.”
Deep ruts marked where heavy equipment had dragged the houseboat off its concrete pad and through the brush. The gangplank now lay flat to the ground, and Gran Mere’s overgrown flowerbeds were crushed. Her oak tree had been smoothly cut at ground level, the massive hardwood rolled aside to make room for the theft.
She coughed, her heart stuck in her throat. “They…He… S-s-someone took everything.”
