Dagger Key and Other Stories

“Calm down. Please! This is…” The wind drifted hair across her face; she brushed it aside and said weakly, “It’s the only way. They’re relentless, they keep coming after you.”

“You did this? You told them where we were?”

“They always knew! They never went away! Don’t you get it?”

“You knew the whole time? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know. Not for sure, not at first. And what good would it have done? You didn’t listen to Doctor Crain.”

“I would have listened to you,” I said.

One of the helicopters positioned itself off the port side of the Mystery Girl; the side door had been slid back and someone in harness sat in the opening. I couldn’t see what he was doing. The other helicopter hovered above the boat. A gilt script D was painted on the nacelle.

“I love you, Jack,” Jo said.

“Yeah, uh-huh.”

“I do! Back at the hotel…they contacted me. They were going to step in, but I convinced them to keep the experiment going.”

“The experiment. This was an experiment?”

“I told them we might learn more about Josey if he went through with the game. Maybe that was wrong of me, but I wanted some time with you.”

I was unable to line up all the trash she’d told me about her mother, how it had warped her, with her capacity for betrayal. Yet what she had said smacked of a childish willfulness and a clinical dispatch that, I realized, functioned as a tag-team in her personality. Until that moment, I had not understood how dangerous these qualities made her.

“I can lose them in the fog,” I said.

“You can’t. You don’t know them.”

“I’m damn well going to try. You think they’ll let me go after what I’ve seen? They just wiped out twenty people!”

“I’m sure they didn’t kill them all.”

“Oh…well. Fuck! That’s all right, then.”

I punched in the ignition; the engine sputtered and caught, rumbling smoothly.

“Don’t, Jack! Please!”

“I’m fucking dead if they catch me. Do you understand? I am dead!”

The barrel of the automatic wavered.

“You’re not going to shoot me,” I said.

I pushed the throttle forward. Jo said again, “Don’t,” and I felt a blow to my back, a wash of pain. I was out of it for a while, and when I was able to gather my senses, I found myself lying on the deck, with my head jammed up against the base of the control console. I knew I’d been shot, but it felt like the bullet had come from something larger than a .28. The guy in the harness, maybe. I was hurting some, but a numb feeling was setting in. It was a chore to concentrate. My thoughts kept slipping away. Jo knelt beside me. I locked on to her face. Looking at her steadied me. “Did you…” I said. “Did you shoot…?”

“Don’t talk,” she said.

Silhouetted against the gray sky, a man was being lowered from the helicopter overhead, along with a metal case that dangled from a hook beside him. It seemed as big as a coffin. The sight confused me visually, and in other ways as well. I closed my eyes against it.

Jo laid a hand on my cheek. The touch cooled the embers of my anger, my disappointment with her, and I was overwhelmed with sentiment. Bits of memory surfaced, whirled, dissolved. She lay down on the deck beside me. She became my sky. Her face hanging above me blotted out the chopper and the man descending.

“I’ll take care of you, I promise,” she said.

Her brown eyes were all that was holding me. A gurgling came from inside my chest. She started raving, then. Getting angry, swearing vengeance, weeping. It was like she thought I’d passed out, like I wasn’t there. Half of it, I didn’t understand. She said they would regret what they’d made her do, she’d make certain I remembered everything, and I would help her make them pay. I didn’t recognize her, she was so possessed by pain and fury. She laid her head on my chest. I wanted to tell her the weight was oppressive, but I couldn’t form the words. The lengths of her hair were drowning me. Her voice, the helicopter rotors, and the fading light merged into a gray tumult, an incoherence.

“Jack…”

…Jack…

A jolt, as of electricity, to the back of my neck.

Jack…Jack Lamb…

My eyelids fluttered open.

A gray ocean surrounded me, picked out by vague shapes.

Jack Lamb…Jack…

Another jolt, more intense than the first. I tried to move, but I was very weak and I succeeded only in turning my head. Someone passed across my field of vision, accompanied by a perfumey scent. Wanting to catch their notice, I made a scratchy noise in my throat. The effort caused me to pass out.

Jack…

“Jack? Are you awake?” A woman’s voice.

“Yeah,” I said, my tongue thick, throat raw.

Something was inserted between my lips and a cool liquid soothed the rawness. My chest hurt. My whole body hurt.

“How’s that? Better?” The voice had a familiar ring.

“I can’t see,” I said. “Everything’s a blur.”

“The doctor says you’ll be seeing fine in a few days.”

I asked for more water and, after I had drunk, I said, “I know you…don’t I?”

“Of course. Jocundra…Jo.” A pause. “Your partner. We live together. Don’t you remember?”

“I think. Yeah.”

“You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. Your memory will be hazy for a while.”