Fever Dream - Douglas Preston [153]
“Who are you?” the woman asked. Her voice was frosty, her composure recovered. She was dressed simply and elegantly in a pale cream dress without pattern, no jewelry, and yet she was carefully made up, her hair recently done. Most of all, Pendergast was impressed by the fierce intelligence behind her steely blue eyes. He recognized her almost immediately from the photographs in the Vital Records file in Baton Rouge.
“June Brodie,” he said.
Her face paled, but only slightly. In the tense silence that ensued, a faint cry, of pain or perhaps despair, came muffled through a door at the far end of the room. Pendergast turned; stared.
When June Brodie spoke again, her voice was cool. “I’m afraid your unexpected arrival has disturbed my patient. And that is really most unfortunate.”
73
PATIENT?” PENDERGAST ASKED.
Brodie said nothing.
“We can discuss the matter later,” Pendergast said. “Meanwhile, I have an injured colleague in the swamp. I require your boat. And these facilities.”
When nothing happened, he waved his gun. “Anything less than full haste and cooperation will be seriously detrimental to your health.”
“There’s no need to threaten me.”
“I’m afraid there is. May I remind you who fired first?”
“You came bursting in here like the Seventh Cavalry—what did you expect?”
“Shall we bandy civilities later?” Pendergast said coldly. “My colleague is badly hurt.”
Still remarkably composed, June Brodie turned, pressed the tab on a wall intercom, and spoke into it with a voice of command. “We have visitors. Prepare to receive an emergency patient—and meet us with a stretcher down on the dock.”
Brodie walked through the room and exited the door without looking over her shoulder. Pendergast followed her back down the hallway, gun at the ready. She descended the stairs, crossed the main parlor of the lodge, exited the building, and walked across the platform to the pier to the floating dock. She stepped gracefully into the back and fired up the engine. “Untie the boat,” she said. “And please put away that gun.”
Pendergast tucked the gun in his belt and untied the boat. She revved the engine, backing it out.
“She’s about a thousand yards east-southeast,” said Pendergast, pointing into the darkness. “That way,” he added. “There’s a gunman in the swamp. But of course, you probably know all about that. He may be wounded—he may not.”
Brodie looked at him. “Do you want to retrieve your colleague, or not?”
Pendergast indicated the boat’s control panel.
Saying nothing else, the woman accelerated the boat and they sped along the muddy shores of the bayou. After a few minutes she slowed to enter a tiny channel, which wound this way and that, dividing and braiding into a labyrinth of waterways. Brodie managed to penetrate the swamp in a way that Pendergast was surprised was possible, always keeping to a sinuous channel that, even in bright moonlight, was almost invisible.
“More to the right,” he said, peering into the trees. They were using no lights; it was easier to see farther in the moonlight—and it was safer as well.
The boat wound among the channels, now and then threatening to ground in the shallow muck but always sliding across when the jet drive was gunned.
“There,” said Pendergast, pointing to the mark on the tree trunk.
The boat grounded sluggishly on a mud bar. “This is as far as we can go,” Brodie murmured.
Pendergast turned to her, searched her quickly and expertly for concealed weapons, and then spoke in a low voice. “Stay here. I’ll go retrieve my colleague. Continue to cooperate and you’ll survive this night.”
“I repeat: you don’t need to threaten me,” she said.
“It’s not a threat; it’s clarification.” Pendergast climbed over the side of the boat and began making his way through the muck.
“Captain Hayward?” he called.
No answer.
“Laura?”
Still nothing but silence.
In a moment he was at Hayward’s side. She was still in shock, semi-conscious, her head lolling against the rotten stump. He glanced back and forth briefly, listening for