Chapter Ten
All Maryse wanted to do was get the map and get into the bayou. With any luck, she’d be able to get some work done for the state and locate the plant she needed for the trials. But when she pulled her boat up to her cabin dock, Helena Henry was there, looking more upset than Maryse have ever thought possible.
“You can’t go in there,” Helena said, her face tense.
“Try to stop me. You still have some things to answer for, Helena, and don’t think I forgot them just because you pulled a disappearing act this morning.” Maryse stepped onto the dock and strode toward her cabin.
“No! Wait!” Helena hurried after her. “I think there’s something wrong with your cabin.”
Maryse stopped short. “What do you mean, something’s wrong?”
“Your truck wreck got me to thinking. What if it wasn’t an accident at all? So I’ve been watching your place as much as possible, figuring if the truck didn’t work, then they might do something here. I made a quick trip to my house this morning after your phone call and hightailed it back here as soon as possible, but I was too late. I saw a man leaving as I walked across from the dock. He was carrying a duffle bag and got in a boat that was parked in that cove behind the cabin. Then he tore out of here something fierce.”
“It was probably just kids. You know how teenagers traipse around the bayou.”
Helena shook her head. “It wasn’t a kid. This guy moved like an adult, his frame was mature—medium height and a ball cap.”
Maryse stared at her. “Then who was it? C’mon, Helena, you know everyone in this town, same as me.”
Helena shook her head again, the panic starting to show on her face. “I didn’t see his face. And I couldn’t catch up to the boat in time to read a license tag or anything. But he was up to no good. I know it. Why else would he dock in that cove and wade through the marsh to get up here when there’s a perfectly good pier out front?”
Maryse glanced over at her cabin and bit her lower lip. Unfortunately, Helena was right—it didn’t sound good. Suddenly, entering her cabin for a map didn’t appear as easy as she’d originally thought. She looked once more at the cabin, then back at Helena. “So why don’t you pop through a wall and take a look?”
Helena gave her a withering stare. “Don’t you think I’ve already done that? I still can’t move things. If he hid something in a cabinet or a drawer, I’d never see it. Not like I know what I’m looking for in the first place.”
A sudden thought struck Maryse and she felt a chill rush over her. “Jasper was in the cabin this morning.”
“Who the hell’s Jasper?”
“My cat. I can’t let anything happen to him.”
Helena stared at her. “You mean that ragtag old tomcat missing an ear? That’s what you’re worried about?”
“I rescued that ragtag old tomcat from a fight with an alligator, and yes, I’m worried about him. He’s family, whether you get that or not.”
Helena shrugged. “You have strange ideas about family, Maryse, but it doesn’t matter either way. The cat took off out the kitchen window as soon as I walked into the cabin.” She frowned and pursed her lips. “Maybe it’s true what they say about cats seeing ghosts. He shot out of the room the first time I visited you, too.”
As interesting as Helena’s observation may have been some other time, Maryse just couldn’t care about it at the moment. “You’re sure he’s not in there?”
“Positive,” Helena said, and nodded. “He was halfway across the marsh when I looked out the window, but I’ll pop in and take another look.” She strolled up the path and through the wall of the cabin, then reappeared a couple of minutes later. “He’s not there. I checked every nook and cranny.”
“Okay. So what do you think I should do?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t want you going in that cabin. What if they left the gas on or something?”
Maryse considered her words and weighed her options. “You think he could have rigged something…like an explosion, maybe?” She ran one hand through her hair and tried to think. “Okay, if he rigged something to explode, then it would probably happen when I opened the front door, right? I mean, one look at my kitchen and anyone could see I don’t cook, and besides, I had my gas turned off when I started construction on the cabinets.”
Helena shook her head, clearly miserable. “I guess. I just don’t know.”
“Well, hell, that’s the way it happens in the movies.” She blew out a breath in frustration. “How should I know? We didn’t exactly cover this sort of thing in college.”
“Well, it wasn’t covered in the society pages, either, so I don’t know why you’re getting all pissy with me. I’m trying to save your skinny ass from whatever that man cooked up.”
Maryse clenched her jaw, not about to launch into why she was pissy with Helena. If not for Helena and her games, Maryse’s skinny ass would be nice and safe. She took another look at the cabin. Mind made up, she drew her keys from her pocket and began walking toward the front door. Helena started to protest, but Maryse beat her to the punch. “I’m not going inside. I’m only going to unlock the door.”
She crept up the path, feeling like a fool for sneaking up on her own home, and stopped at her front door, easing the key into the lock. It slid in silently, and she heard the barely audible click of chambers rolling inside the door as she turned the key to the left. Then she backed away from the cabin as quickly as possible and stopped at the dock next to Helena.
“What now?” Helena asked.
Maryse jumped into her boat and lifted the back seat to get into the storage box. “The latch on the front door is so old it doesn’t hold anymore. Unless it’s locked, even a good wind will blow it open.”
“No wind today. Figures.”
“No matter.” Maryse reached into the box and pulled out a shotgun and a box of shells.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Rubber bullets,” Maryse explained. “I have to have them for the job. Not supposed to kill the critters, you know. They won’t tear anything up, but it will be more than enough punch to open that door.” Maryse grabbed the tie line for her boat and pulled it along the edge of the bank until it rested behind an overhang. “Better stand back,” Maryse said as she loaded the gun. “I know nothing can touch you, but this might be scary if you’re right about that guy.”
Helena hesitated for a millisecond, then hopped into the boat next to Maryse. They stood on one side and peered over the edge of the bank. Satisfied with their position, Maryse lifted the shotgun over the bank and aimed it at the front door.
“You ready?” she asked Helena.
Helena covered her ears with both hands and nodded.
“Here goes,” Maryse said, and pulled the trigger.
The shot seemed to happen in slow motion, although it couldn’t have taken more than a second for the bullet to hit the door. The instant they heard the smack of the rubber on the wood, the door flung open, giving them a clear view of the inside of the cabin. Maryse was certain neither of them moved, or breathed, or even blinked, but as the seconds passed, only dead silence remained.
Maryse was just about to give the entire thing up as Helena’s overactive imagination when the cabin exploded.
Maryse ducked behind the ledge and flattened herself against the dirt wall as flat as possible. If she hadn’t been so frightened, she might have been amused to see Helena crouched there next to her as pieces of glass and wood flew everywhere—some hitting Maryse on her hands which covered her head, and some landing in the bayou behind them.
It took only seconds for the rain of glass and wood to stop, but it felt like forever. When the last piece of debris plopped into the water, Maryse waited another five seconds, then peeked over the bank and sucked in a breath at what she saw.
The cabin was completely leveled. Not a single wall remained, and even the bathtub was nowhere to be seen. That had her wondering for a moment since it was an old cast iron tub and had to weigh a ridiculous amount. She stared in stunned silence at the degree of damage, unable to make out anything, not even a wall. Absolutely everything had been torn apart by the blast.
Maryse swallowed the lump in her throat and tried to hold back tears when she caught a glimpse of something shiny hanging from one of the cypress trees. She strained her eyes to make out the object and realized with a jolt that it was a picture frame. Even with the metal twisted and black, she knew exactly what picture had hung in that frame.
Suddenly, Maryse’s sadness and loss shifted to anger. Two years worth of anger, all bubbling forth at this exact moment. She screamed at the top of her lungs and pounded the embankment with her fists. Helena stepped back in surprise and fell off the back of the boat and onto the bayou where she rested on top of the water, rising and falling with the waves.
“This is all your fault!” Maryse shouted at Helena. “Like producing that sorry excuse for a human being you call a son wasn’t enough—you had to rise from the dead, visible only to me, the person who probably despises you most, and then have the nerve to make me a moving target by leaving me some piece of land I was much better off without!”
Helena stared at her a moment, then looked down at the bayou, not saying a word.
“Look at this,” Maryse cried, and waved an arm over the embankment at the disaster that used to be her home. “I have nothing left because of you. Everything I owned was in that house. And don’t even talk to me about insurance because I don’t want to hear it. How is insurance going to replace my mom and dad’s wedding photo? How is insurance going to replace the Dr. Seuss books my mom read to me when I was a baby?”
Maryse bit her lip, trying to hold back the tears of anger that threatened to fall. “The only memory I have of her is reading those books. You’ve taken everything from me and given me nothing but trouble in return. I never thought I could hate you more than I did when I was paying Hank’s debts, but I was wrong.” She stared at Helena, but the ghost wouldn’t even meet her eyes.
Disgusted, she started her boat and pulled away from the embankment, leaving Helena sitting on top of the bayou. Maryse’s life was ruined. She had nothing left, not even the photos of her parents. She felt as if they were being erased from existence, all proof of her and her world being swept away. And even worse, obviously someone wanted her swept away with her memories.
Unless you beat the odds.
The thought ran through her head with a jolt. All of her anger at Helena and the situation with the will, at Hank for running out on her, at her mom for dying too soon, and her dad for following behind her mother with his stubbornness, came together in one instant, and she felt a sudden clarity run through her. There was one way to fix this. One way to make everything right.
Stay alive and keep that damned land.
Her resolution made, she shoved the throttle down on her boat and it leapt out of the water. Whoever had tried to kill her had made a fatal mistake in not getting the job done the first time, because now she was mad.
A mad scientist.