Chapter 7 - THE REEDS ON THE ASHLEY
The cold mud of the Ashley River bank sucked at my bare feet like hungry mouths.
The marsh grass rose seven feet high, sharp as straight razors against my arms.
In my closed right fist, Graham’s wedding ring burned like an ember.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Gunfire erupted from the tunnel mouth behind me.
Muffled.
Violent.
The distinctive, heavy report of Graham’s .45 barking in controlled, deadly pairs.
Screams followed.
The gurgling cry of a man drowning in his own blood beneath the brick arches.
I didn't throw the ring into the river.
I shoved it down into the bodice of my dress, right against my skin, directly over my heart.
Ten minutes, he had said.
I am not waiting ten minutes for a corpse.
I dropped to my hands and knees, crawling through the freezing salt marsh toward the wooden silhouette of the old boat house.
The structure leaned into the tidal creek like a rotted tooth, built eighty years ago by bootleggers during the dry years.
The water here was black, smelling of low tide, diesel fumes, and decaying pluff mud.
I reached the wooden pilings beneath the slip.
Moored to the second timber was Graham’s shallow-draft aluminum skiff.
A duck hunting boat.
Camouflaged.
Fitted with a customized seventy-horsepower mud motor that could navigate three inches of marsh water without fouling the prop.
I pulled myself over the gunwale.
The aluminum was freezing against my bare legs.
I reached beneath the stern bench.
My fingers found the hidden magnetic key box bolted to the fuel tank.
The brass key was inside.
I didn't start the engine.
The cough of a two-stroke motor would draw every rifle on the riverbank.
I untied the hemp mooring line with numb, clumsy fingers.
I grabbed the long wooden push-pole from the gunwale brackets.
I jammed the pole into the thick river mud, throwing my weight forward against the wood.
The skiff slid silently out from beneath the pilings into the dark current.
Rain slashed across the open water, whipping my hair into my eyes.
A hundred yards up the shoreline, the storm-water discharge pipe of the tunnel emptied into the creek.
Three men in black tactical parkas stood on the concrete lip of the pipe, their flashlights sweeping the reeds.
Between them lay two bodies in dark windbreakers, motionless in the mud.
Graham’s work.
Then I saw him.
Graham stumbled out of the pipe into the open marsh.
He was on his hands and knees.
His right hand still clutched his Kimber, but the slide was locked back.
Empty.
His left arm hung completely useless at his side, dark blood pouring down his fingers into the salt grass.
Standing on the ridge ten feet above him was Julian Vance.
Vance wore a heavy shearling coat over his tuxedo.
In his hands, he held a scoped Benelli tactical shotgun.
“You should have taken the deal in Savannah, Graham,” Vance’s voice drifted across the water, smooth and conversational.
“Your father was stubborn.”
“You’re arrogant.”
“And now your docks belong to my family.”
Vance raised the shotgun, centering the bead between Graham’s shoulder blades.
Graham didn't beg.
He didn't turn around.
He pushed himself up onto his knees, his chin lifted toward the rainy night sky, waiting for the slug that would end his reign.
I didn't hesitate.
I dropped the push-pole.
I reached into the pocket of my ruined navy dress.
The pearl-handled .22 had three rounds left in the cylinder.
The range was sixty yards.
An impossible shot with a two-inch barrel in a driving October rainstorm.
“Breathe out,” my father’s memory whispered from twenty years ago on the farm in Aiken.
“Squeeze when the sight stops moving.”
I didn't aim for Vance’s head.
I aimed for the heavy glass lantern mounted on the wooden piling three feet above Vance’s right ear.
BANG.
The tiny round struck the kerosene reservoir of the marine lamp.
The glass shattered.
Pressurized fuel sprayed across Vance’s shearling coat, catching the spark from the severed electrical wire.
WHOOSH.
A pillar of orange fire engulfed Vance’s right shoulder.
Vance shrieked in agony, dropping the shotgun into the mud, rolling frantically down the embankment into the salt grass to smother the flames.
The two remaining guards spun toward the water, their flashlights blinding me through the rain.
I dropped low behind the aluminum gunwale of the skiff.
I reached for the starter cord of the mud motor.
I wrapped the nylon rope around my good hand.
With every ounce of rage, betrayal, and stubborn Southern fury left in my bones, I hauled the cord backward.
RRRR-CLACK.
The seventy-horsepower engine roared to life with a deafening, guttural scream.
May you like
I slammed the throttle wide open.
The aluminum skiff reared out of the water like a striking viper, hurtling straight toward the muddy bank at thirty-five miles per hour.
